Recently, DUSON worked with Canopy Innovations to strengthen its commitment to the Spanish-speaking population, currently numbering 41 million in the United States.Canopy has helped DUSON to diversify and enrich their medical Spanish offering for the entire nursing student body.

Preliminary data suggest that incorporation of a longitudinal Spanish language and cultural competency curriculum for Emergency Medicine (EM) residents has a beneficial impact on patient satisfaction and adherence to medical recommendations for Spanish-speaking patients. Canopy Learn — Canopy’s NIH-funded online medical Spanish course — was one of the components of this curriculum that has demonstrated improvement in patient experience and medical adherence.

One in every eight individuals in the U.S. is limited-English proficient (LEP). Unfortunately, only a small fraction of those patients receive language assistance services due to limited resources and inadequate tools. The language barrier undermines the quality of care the nursing community is able to deliver to the growing LEP population.

Check out this tragically humorous clip from HBO’s show, “Getting On.” Albeit dramatized for Hollywood, this clip is indicative of a real issue: the deficit in useful tools providers have at their disposal when working with LEP patients.

CEO, Michael Cullinan and Manager of Advocacy & Partnerships, Olivia Norrmén-Smith, will be speaking on the "Anatomy of the Pilot" panel this coming Sunday 25th to help kick off the 10th Annual Health 2.0 Fall Conference.

Canopy Innovations was thrilled to receive this original poem from Victoria Roberts as a submission to the #canopyconvos contest. It is a beautiful reflection on the harrowing nature of the linguistic and cultural barrier in healthcare.

As health care providers, it is our responsibility to provide comfort and act as a source of information for all the patients we see. Language barriers can make this extremely difficult, especially when compounded by the shaky inexperienced hands of young medical students. It is vitally important for all young health professionals to properly educate themselves in the language and necessary skills before endeavoring to care for people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that global displacement has reached an all-time high. In fact, 1 in every 113 people on the planet are refugees or asylum-seekers, seeking protection outside of their home country. That's 65.3 million people forcibly displaced in 2015.

"In summary, the study found that fewer than 1 in 20 online complaints cite diagnosis, treatments and outcomes in healthcare as unsatisfactory, whereas more than 19 of 20 unhappy patients said inadequate communications and disorganized operations drove them to post harsh reviews." (Becker's Hospital Review)

-New and improved navigation!-Access to popular searches from across the Canopy community-Full screen display to easily share phrases with your patients-Curated playlists of your most common and recently used phrases-Bug fixes, UI improvements and performance enhancements

In the article, Influx of West Africans in the Bronx Spurs Demand for Interpreters Liz Robbins not only emphasizes the scope of the language barrier for this growing population in the healthcare realm but also in navigating and accessing other processes from immigration paperwork to housing applications, education services, etc.